These are my parents: my father Lev Trachtenberg and my mother Basheva Trachtenberg (nee Lubavina). This photo was made in Kiev in the 1920s.
After finishing school my father went to work. During WWI he was a private at the front fighting against Germans… He also served in The Red Army during the revolution and Civil War. This is the way he was. He was a communist and believed in all these ideas… As for my grandmother, she couldn't care less about politics, so it was his own choice.
My mother's name was Basheva Lubalina, she was usually called Sheva or Shura in the Russian manner. She was born in 1902. Since my grandfather was so greedy my mother finished only two grades, probably then my grandmother died and her father didn't want her to continue studies. So my mother had little education and worked as a seamstress.
I have no idea how my parents met, they never told me. They had a civil wedding. As I already mentioned, my father was an atheist and my mother didn't seem to believe in anything living with my grandmother. When they got married my mother moved in with my father. My father was a joiner and my mother became a housewife. They had a good life. My father wasn't tall, my mother was taller and somehow bigger than him… My father was thin and baldish. He was nice and cheerful. He danced well and he passed it to me. He was very honest and decent and my mother was kind, quiet and phlegmatic. One could tell at once that my father was he head of the family and my mother relied on him in everything.
I was born in Kiev in 1925. Before the war we lived with grandmother Rosa, my father’s mother. We had a huge family: my uncles and their wives and my aunt with her husband… We lived in Pechersk in the very center of Kiev. Our apartment looked like a communal apartment: huge, just gorgeous. There was everything there, and what a kitchen… Everything was big, there was stucco molding, a fireplace and radiators… There were family gatherings in the kitchen on Sundays. There were long dinners, there was alcohol on the table and there were conversations. An interesting family, close. My parents and we lived in a big room. All different people, but we went along with all neighbors.
